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Oppo Beats Gionee and Adds Motors to N Series

China’s Gionee’s S5.1 (Display Monitor Vol 21 No 39) didn’t hold on to its title of ‘world’s thinnest smartphone’ for long. Domestic rival Oppo has beaten the 5.1mm phone with its Oppo R5, which is 4.85mm thick. Of course, the thin (steel) body does have a trade-off. While many of the phone’s specifications are toward … Read more

Panasonic Completes 7″ Toughpad Range With Android

Panasonic’s 7″ Toughpad range has been completed, with a new Android 4.4.4 model – the Toughpad FZ-B2 – joining existing Windows units. A fanless tablet, the Fz-B2 is IP65-compliant, meets the MIL-STD-810G standard and can be dropped from 1.5m. Operation is possible in -10 deg to 50 deg temperatures. With extended use in mind, Panasonic … Read more

Shanda Uses Hybrid Display for Week-Long Smartwatch Life

Shanda, a Chinese manufacturer, has unveiled two smartwatches with battery life of up to a week. Using a hybrid screen, which switches between (transflective) LCD and E Ink modes, the Geak Watch 2 and Geak Watch 2 Pro support up to six or seven days of normal use, respectively. In standby mode, using only the … Read more

Tracking Deformation for Tablet Input

Microsoft Research has developed a transparent sensor surface for tablet PCs, called FlexSense. The work was performed in partnership with the Institute of Surface Technologies and Photonics of Joanneum Research and the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria. FlexSense is a flexible sensor foil connected to the tablet. It enables a direct reconstruction of complex … Read more

Samsung’s Sharp Move

The big story of last week was, without doubt, the planned Samsung investment in Sharp. The symbolism is more important than the substance. The deal indicates that Samsung wants to have an on-going relationship with its Japanese rival and that would have been very surprising in the past. However, the stark economics of the future … Read more

CES & Eye Tracking

I wrote in Display Monitor recently about this time being the time for a change over from PCs being at the centre of our technology worlds and mobile devices dominating. This will be a continuing challenge for monitor makers, but the business won’t go away. Our unofficial company motto is “Don’t forget the people” and … Read more

Chaebols in the Matrix

Looking back on the year, the big trend has been the increasing dominance of the 2 x 2 matrix of Apple and Samsung, phones and tablets. If you don’t fit one of the four quadrants in that matrix and you’re in the electronics business, you probably didn’t have a great year. Even though tech giant … Read more

DOOH is on the rise

Both desktop monitors (DTMs) and TV forecasting have been fairly negative processes in recent quarters. In all three of the markets that we track, larger sized sets are growing in share, but in Public Displays, the rate of growth is higher than the fall in pricing that we expect, so the value of the market … Read more

High Five with Christian Thévot of Texas Instruments

Christian Thévot is the Business development manager, DLP pico, Texas Instruments. Christian manages TI’s DLP pico projection products in EMEA, working with companies using these technologies to promote them across the region. 1. What do you consider are the five most important market developments in the last five years?Over the past five years the world … Read more

Windows 8 Launch

Windows 8 was launched last week. The general reaction is the same as I highlighted when I saw the original Microsoft Surface announcement, that the O/S is a good one from the technical and stability point of view, but that it seems to be very confusing for the user. There seem to be four distinct … Read more